What's going on in your city/country/region?

[Catoptric]

Trump admin permits sale of (reset trigger) device that allows standard firearms to fire like machine guns. . .
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justic ... rcna207395


A Youtube video was showing some local criminals that confessed to selling untracked guns and reset triggers to minors. A lot of the criminal activity uses them, as hit and runs. No rational person (or sane one) would ever want to legalize this stuff, and theirs a reasons people go through extreme lengths to get 'Class 2' weapons.

NBC: DOJ Settles Suit, Will Allow the Sale of Forced Reset Triggers and Return All FRTs ATF Has Seized
https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/atf/ ... as-siezed/


And people wondered why the NRA was silent about the use of militias to go against tyranny and threats to the government (it seems to be going full-steam ahead into creating a shit show.)


For a reminder of the time someone shot at Trump
https://nyti.ms/3ScApVn

Some believe his ear was damaged by the SS agent who slid into him as he was on the ground, causing the bleeding, when his holster would have clipped the side of his head. It was a freak accident he didn't get killed, as it seems the bullet would have had to actually hit him from 400 feet away.



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The Mexican Navy sailing ship that struck the Brooklyn Bridge, not only was too tall, but when the tug boat was supposed to be maneuvering it, the cable snapped away, causing it to careen into the bridge, killing 2 and critically injuring many.

The Navy school had a post (translated) and one of the comments explained it (though I was familiar with it, most of the details are left out.)

In a way, this should be considered an international incident (though whose fault is it ultimately, and why were they up on the sails during a time that was considered risky?)



https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16E1he2KzN/

Additional information on Mexican School Ship crash.
Tow truck fails and drifts Mexican vessel in New York
The Mexican Navy's Cuauhtemoc school ship, with 277 people on board, was involved in an accident Tuesday afternoon when it partially crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge during an exit maneuver from the New York Harbor.
According to the Navy's Secretariat, the balance was 22 injured crew members, 11 of them in critical condition and nine stable. Sadly, two crew members passed away due to the severity of their injuries.
According to information obtained by Alfa News from sources close to the Secretariat of the Navy and the U.S. Army, the cause of the disaster was an external failure: the port tug — charged with assisting the Mexican vessel during the sailing maneuver — suffered the rupture of a large-thick cable, what left the Cuauhtemoc adrift.
At the time of the accident, the sailboat did not have the clutch machines (i.e. the engines running but no active propulsion), as per the protocol when a vessel is towed. Strong currents dragged it in reverse, and although an attempt to regain control, it was too late to avoid the impact of the masts against the bridge's structure.
Videos circulating on social networks clearly show that the ship was moving forward with the stern at the front, indicating that it was unwittingly dragged.
So far, US and Mexican authorities are continuing the investigation, and have not issued an official report on the case, but images and testimonies point to a failure in the towing procedure as the trigger of the incident.

[Roger Mexico]

And this didn't just start under Trump, which is one of the more F'd up things.

I've been seeing some claims lately that the Salvadoran government has been arresting journalists who allege that Bukele actually made a secret deal with some gang leaders to achieve crime-rate reductions that he publicly claims are purely the result of his mass-detention program.

[Catoptric]

I was downloading random movies from 2022 and finding out what they were (I couldn't know prior to download) and just realized that Bruce Willis happened to star in several of them. I also recall that he was supposed to retire in 2021 because he was suffering from aphasia (which affects the ability to communicate and basic memory problems requiring someone to read him the lines.)

A sketchy (think Donald Trump who doesn't pay people for the work they do) shitstain Producer named Randall Emmett, had Bruce Willis sign a contract to appear in 22 movies where he himself get's paid $200,000 as his "handler" while paying someone else weekly over $4,000 just to read him the lines off camera.

Randall Emmett
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0256542/

The crappy (legacy destroying) movies of Bruce Willis
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000246/

How Bruce Willis, 67, made 22 'Geezer-Teaser' movies over three years for 'churn factory' and paid handler turned 'producer' $200,000 a film to 'keep an eye' on him even as he showed signs of cognitive decline
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ctory.html

Randall Emmett’s Struggles With Bruce Willis Amid Health Issues Revealed as Ex-Employees Speak, Plus Unpaid Debt and Scene He Demanded Be Cut From Pump Rules
https://realityblurb.com/2022/07/01/ran ... -revealed/


Something worth noting:
Inside ‘The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing and Vanderpump’ Documentary: Bankruptcy, Cheating, Lies
https://www.lifeandstylemag.com/posts/t ... cumentary/

"The Row director was rolling in the dough in 2021 when he had an estimated net worth of $20 million. Two years later, his earnings were almost completely gone and ​he was worth $500,000."

It's worth noting that many of those films don't even make for the cost of a basic car ($35,000-$50,000,) while having a budget of $15 million????????????

More backstory (I guess Bruce was getting $2 million a day for 1 day of work, but even then he was forgetting he was making a movie.) I guess the movies were shot in advance and took a year before they were released.
https://www.looper.com/1295607/bruce-wi ... op-master/

One trilogy made a grand total of $340,000 released over 3 months, written and Directed by the same guy. . .)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective ... lm_series)


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Something similar is argued about Donald Trump having to pay millions of taxes (accumulated over years?) for the land his buildings sit on in New York.

Trump lashes out at New York Times report alleging years of tax avoidance (2020)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... x-n1241220

"The Times reported that Trump has not paid any income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years, mostly because he reported significant losses. It reported that Trump is facing a decade-long Internal Revenue Service audit over a $72.9 million tax refund he received that could end up costing him more than $100 million."

Trump’s properties could be seized if $454 million civil fraud debt not paid, warns NY AG James (2024)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/d ... y-ag-james

"NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump could be at risk of losing some of his prized properties if he can’t pay his staggering New York civil fraud penalty. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454 million — and the amount is going up $87,502 each day until he pays."

Trump’s Company Paid Bribes to Reduce Property Taxes, Assessors Say (2020)
https://www.propublica.org/article/trum ... essors-say




Update:
Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/p ... rimes.html


A summary (because it's a paywall

Spoiler

Show

Donald Trump gets caught in a jaw-dropping scandal as it's revealed that he pardoned a man who pleaded guilty to tax crimes just one month after his mother attended a $1 million a head MAGA fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.
And it gets so much worse...
According to a new report from The New York Times, a pardon application was submitted for Paul Walczak around the time of Trump's inauguration. The request specifically mentioned actions by his mother, Elizabeth Fago, to support Trump and the Republican Party.
The request also absurdly claimed that Walczak's prosecution was the result of a political witch hunt. In reality, he pleaded guilty to failing to pay employment taxes and not filing individual income tax returns. He withheld a staggering $7.5 million from his workers but did not pay them to the IRS.
Like so many right-wingers (Trump included) he believes that he's entitled to cheat the system while the rest of us dutifully pay our taxes.
Walczak was sentenced to 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay over $4 million in restitution. Now that he's been pardoned, he will be spared that jail time and will no longer have to pay the fees. Justice has been derailed.
Some time after the pardon application was submitted, Fago attended a fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago with a ticket price of $1 million per person. Throwing all subtlety to the wind, Trump then proceeded to pardon Walczak less than three weeks later.
Fago also helped host at least three Trump campaign fundraisers and attended events at both of his inaugurations. Some reports suggest that she was connected to the right-wing smear campaign to leak the diary of Joe Biden's daughter in 2020.
This is blatant quid pro quo and the kind of thing that would have led to any other president being impeached and removed from office. With Trump, it's unfortunately par for the course.

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This is the current state of "Americuh."
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ANraC9fuh/


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Lasik is a scam (though millions and millions have received treatment?)



The guy (Ryan Kingerski) left his review here:
https://www.yelp.com/biz/lasikplus-pitt ... rating_asc



The FDA guy who approved LASIK regrets it:

“Biggest Scam on Americans” — Why Doctors and Former Patients are Warning Against LASIK Surgery
https://www.inquisitr.com/biggest-scam- ... ik-surgery


I'm also reminded of Cryogenics (or cryonics, not to be confused with equally dubious cryotherapy)
https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonic ... r-stories/
https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/alcor- ... id=8764331
https://www.mic.com/articles/127644/is- ... -dangerous

A woman in Britain started a Gofundme of $200,000 to freeze her 13 year-old dead son (claiming they only have 7 days, when more than likely the brain has already gone to mush.)

Then I'm also reminded that a lot of wealth is generated by people with psychopathic tendencies, and that the the medical care industry is filled with them.

Commentary: Healthcare system in the US is a scam.
https://theithacan.org/46974/opinion/co ... is-a-scam/

***********

Also, this Doctor seems to believe JFK died from a different bullet trajectory to Oswald (or is it implied?) Also, the title is misleading, as the Doctor already recognized that JFK was dead at the time he was shot (nothing would return JFK to anything more than a pulse.)

[Roger Mexico]

I guess Trump just deployed the Marine Corps to Los Angeles to suppress protests against mass deportation.

https://www.latimes.com/california/live ... id-updates

[Madrigal]

I guess Trump just deployed the Marine Corps to Los Angeles to suppress protests against mass deportation.

https://www.latimes.com/california/live ... id-updates

Wild. It feels increasingly like the world has become a sci-fi dystopia. I always compared Orwell and Huxley but now I'm thinking it was Bradbury who got the closest.

[HighlyIrregular]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put a bunch of vaccine critics on a CDC committee. This could affect whether insurance covers some vaccines. One pick is Dr. Robert Malone.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/rfk-jr- ... ittee.html

Malone suggested earlier this year, without evidence, that recent deaths from measles among children were due to medical errors rather than the virus itself. Malone bills himself as having played a key role in the creation of mRNA vaccines, but has become a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine movement.

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s independent panel of vaccine advisers, called some of the new members “anti-vaccine activists.”

“I think the public is not going to be getting the same quality of advice as we had before the purge,” he told CNBC. “I think the people who were on the committee that just got fired had far greater expertise in the areas that you needed expertise than this group.”

Offit said he expects recommendations from ACIP to be “less informed” with the new members.

People are going to die from this move, even if just from pure misinformation. We could add them to the people who already died from this kind of mis/misleading information. I knew it was either tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and went with tens but it was hundreds:

remind me of the claim about how many tens of thousands of people died of Covid due to Trump


ChatGPT said:
Here’s how that claim typically goes:

Many public health experts and analyses assert that tens of thousands of COVID‑19 deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented if the Trump administration had acted more swiftly—particularly with earlier lockdowns, mask guidance, and better federal coordination.

Numbers Behind the Claim
A Lancet Commission and other analyses concluded that roughly 40% of U.S. COVID‑19 deaths (about 180,000 lives) were avoidable if U.S. fatalities had matched the average of other high-income nations.

A Columbia University–led study (referenced by The Guardian) estimated that between 130,000 and 210,000 deaths could have been avoided with earlier interventions and stronger federal leadership.

Models also indicate that state and federal interventions—like earlier travel restrictions, mask mandates, and shutdowns—could have saved tens to hundreds of thousands of lives.

Bottom Line
The phrase “tens of thousands” is a conservative understatement. Studies more commonly point to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths—not just ten or twenty thousand.

Most analyses focus on a range—commonly 130,000 to 210,000—in avoidable fatalities tied to delayed federal action.

So what was the claim?
If someone says, “tens of thousands of people died of Covid due to Trump,” they're referring to these studies showing that hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been prevented with earlier, more decisive federal policies, as compared to peer nations.

Let me know if you’d like a deeper dive into any of these studies or how they modeled “avoidable” deaths.

It's a good time to have my health. Maybe I can fight off the increased nasties that will be in the air. I may stock up on N95 masks again.

[Senseye]

I guess Trump just deployed the Marine Corps to Los Angeles to suppress protests against mass deportation.

https://www.latimes.com/california/live ... id-updates

Wild. It feels increasingly like the world has become a sci-fi dystopia. I always compared Orwell and Huxley but now I'm thinking it was Bradbury who got the closest.

This is mostly political theatre. Trump trying to distract from his spat with Musk and his big deficit bill. I don't think I have seen a crowd bigger than 200-300 protesters at any one time. I think there is a few groups but even so, if a couple thousand people take to the streets it is hardly a massive protest.

And the national guard and marines have not set foot off the ICE detention center parking lot so far, it's all the LA Police dealing with things. Much ado about nothing, but the media is totally distracted, so Trump achieves his goal. Too bad playing the media and grifting are his only skills.